Health committee  Thank you for the question. There is a coalition that has come together called the Canadian Coalition for Genetic Fairness, which you may have heard from. It is led by the Huntington Society. We are a member of that coalition. On how this arose, across Canada and all over the w

Health committee  Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the health committee, for the opportunity to speak to you today about three key points. The first is integrated care, which includes specialist and primary care access for people with Parkinson's. The second is caregiver support. And the thir

Subcommittee on Neurological Disease committee  In the area of innovation, there has been some work with Dr. Ivar Mendez on robotics, which has a wonderful application internationally whereby a specialist can coach other specialists from afar about techniques. It shows how you can transfer clinical practice into having the exp

Subcommittee on Neurological Disease committee  Most of the research projects have just started. The first year was really getting together with regard to RFPs and selecting projects and going through the whole process of granting opportunities for people to explore key areas within the study. It's very early to talk about any

Subcommittee on Neurological Disease committee  We really recognize, though, that the issues we raise also have federal mandate and influence with the provinces and territories through the FTP process. We were hoping that in terms of our working with provinces, that could percolate up, and also that the federal government coul

Subcommittee on Neurological Disease committee  Absolutely. You have Jon from British Columbia here, who knows the provincial jurisdiction really well, as many of our colleagues do. We realize that today we've kind of slipped back and forth between them.

Subcommittee on Neurological Disease committee  I have one other point. In Ontario, we've worked in a parallel process with the neurological health charities, and there is an Ontario brain strategy that parallels the national brain strategy. That has been extremely effective in terms of Ontario government investment. Yesterday

Subcommittee on Neurological Disease committee  I would like to suggest that there should be consideration to having neurological centres. There are several centres in ALS, MS, Parkinson's, that aren't connected and may not even be in the same location, that could come together and share the multidisciplinary expertise where t

Subcommittee on Neurological Disease committee  You've heard from Greg the impact on him. I'd like to table with you—I don't want to spend a lot of time on them here—six recommendations. I could tell you quickly a couple of them. Really, we would like to see an advisory committee that would look at income reform. We have a num

Subcommittee on Neurological Disease committee  Madam Chair, may I?

Subcommittee on Neurological Disease committee  Parkinson Society Canada has been contacted by individuals who have notified their employer that they had Parkinson's only to find a very short time later that they were without a job. They were either laid off or there was a restructuring. They end up without any plan such as Gr

Subcommittee on Neurological Disease committee  I'd just like to say that we'd also like to see a range of therapeutic products available to people with Parkinson's, because there are some decisions made where there's only one in a class, and another product that would come forward, that would be beneficial to individuals who

Subcommittee on Neurological Disease committee  Yes, we have. We've had several individuals come forward who have faced insurance issues, insurance applications when they were requested to check off what conditions they had. Some were requested to either have genetic testing, or when they checked off that they had genetic test

Subcommittee on Neurological Disease committee  Well, first of all, when individuals take these tests.... I'm not the expert on this. Actually, Dr. Schlossmacher is better positioned to answer this question, because this is his area of expertise. The one thing I would say is that if individuals have genetic testing availabl

Subcommittee on Neurological Disease committee  I would hope that we wouldn't wait the four years. There is information available now. The study that completes in 2013 will better inform our decisions and give us far more detail and data than we have now, but there's a lot of work to do. We need to do a lot of strategic thinki